Ex-Hong Kong governor: China breached city autonomy pledge ‘comprehensively’

Name: Ex-Hong Kong governor: the West must ‘constrain China, not contain it’
Uploaded: 2022-06-20T17:31:29.000Z
Duration: 1 min 45 s
Description: Ex-Hong Kong governor: the West must ‘constrain China, not contain it’

‘One country, two systems’ principle in agreement was supposed to provide a ‘high degree of autonomy’ to Hong Kong for 50 years, to 2047

Migration of talent from Hong Kong in recent years is a ‘huge loss’ for the city, Chris Patten, the city’s last British governor, says

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Chris Patten, the last British governor of Hong Kong, speaks at a press conference in London on Monday. Photo: AP

Chad Brayin London

Published: 1:31am, 21 Jun 2022Updated: 4:29am, 21 Jun 2022

The agreement between China and Britain to guarantee a “high degree of autonomy” for Hong Kong for 50 years following its handover to Chinese control a quarter-century ago has been “breached comprehensively” in recent years by Beijing, according to Chris Patten, Hong Kong’s last British governor.

The principle of “one country, two systems” in the Joint Declaration on the question of Hong Kong, which was filed at the United Nations in 1985, was supposed to guarantee a “high degree of autonomy” for the city, protect its way of life as well as its freedoms and rule of law, Patten recalled. The handover went into effect on July 1, 1997, and the guarantee was to last to 2047.

“It’s fair to say for 10 years after 1997, maybe a bit longer, things did not go too badly wrong, but they’ve gone downhill since, partly because [Chinese President] Xi Jinping and his colleagues are terrified of what Hong Kong actually stands for,” said Patten, who in a new book is quite critical of a controversial national security law enacted for the city two years ago.

“I think the things that Hong Kong stands for – the freedoms and the characteristics of the Hong Kong sense of citizenship – are important to all of us,” he added.

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Ex-Hong Kong governor: the West must ‘constrain China, not contain it’

Patten was speaking at a news conference in London promoting “The Hong Kong Diaries”, which summarises journals he kept in the five years he served as Hong Kong’s governor before the handover to China in July 1997 and analyses developments in subsequent years.

Now chancellor of the University of Oxford, Patten said that one of the most difficult conversations he has had is with Hong Kong students studying abroad about returning to the city.